The Kurubeu’en — the Achehnese form of the Arabic qurbān, the “Great Feast of Sacrifices” — is the festival celebrated on the 10th day of Dul-hidjah, the twelfth month of the Mohammedan year, in connection with the hajj in the valley of Muna (the ancient Mina) east of Mecca. As C. Snouck Hurgronje describes it, “the books of the law recommend, though they do not imperatively prescribe, the holding of public prayers in other places some time after sunrise on this day. These prayers are followed by the sermon proper to the festival, and it is also considered highly meritorious to sacrifice animals. The two preceding days are also regarded as specially eligible for voluntary fasts. Those who are performing the hajj, however, do not usually fast, as this cannot be required of them in view of the fatigues of their journey.”
In Acheh, the feast was preceded by a three-days fair of the same kind as those which preceded the months Kanduri Bu and Puasa. The 7th of the month was uròë peutron, the 8th uròë pupò, the 9th uròë seumeusi’ih, and the three taken together uròë ma’meugang. “In this latter case there was in the Sultan’s time no sranta or proclamation by heralds.” In point of animation, however, this annual fair fell far behind the other two. “On this occasion the object of the slaughter is not, as before the Puasa, to supply a store of cooked meat for a couple of weeks; and the buying of new clothes, which is universal at the end of the fasting month, is not customary in the month Haji.” The feast day itself was a repetition on a much smaller scale of the uròë raya Puasa: “Very few indeed give a thought to religious exercises. As a general rule the men take their festival-bath in the morning at the meunasah, exchange handshakes with the friends whom they meet on the road, and pay some festal visits, at which the jeumphan are in due course served to them after the sirih. Some also visit their family burial-places.”
The characteristic observance of the Kurubeu’en is the sacrifice of animals. The law teaches that “a single head of small cattle (goats or sheep) may serve as a sacrifice for one person, while seven persons may, if they so prefer, join in offering a single head of large cattle (oxen or camels).” In Acheh the genus bos was generally selected for the kurubeu’en. “As a rule oxen and not buffaloes are chosen in spite of the pretty general preference for the flesh of the latter. This is connected with the very widespread belief in the Eastern Archipelago, that an animal offered as a sacrifice will hereafter serve the sacrificer as a steed upon the ‘plain of the resurrection’ (padang makhra). A goat is too small for this purpose, and a buffalo, accustomed as it is to wallow in mud and shallow water might inconvenience his rider by walking with him into a river or ditch.” Whoever wished to make sacrifice usually handed over the animal to an ulama, “that nothing may be lacking to the proper ceremonial”; the animal was killed under the ulama’s supervision, and the flesh distributed among the people of the gampong.
Before the coming of the Dutch to Acheh, great — though in many respects profane — kurubeu’en feasts used to be held in the gampong of Bitay, which belongs to the VI Mukims of the XXV. “People assembled there in crowds from the 10th to the 13th of the month Haji, and even for a couple of days longer. They came from the capital and the whole of the surrounding district, nay, all the sagis lent their contributions to this noisy gathering.” The tomb of Teungku di Bitay, who taught the Achehnese the art of casting cannon, and the mosque which stands beside the grave are revered as sacred; “it is difficult to conjecture why this tomb in particular is esteemed the proper place for offering sacrifices in the month of Haji. We only know that Bitay came to be regarded as the place for these sacrifices, and that the feasts celebrated there assumed an entirely worldly character and became an offence to all devout persons. Gambling, cockfighting and sadati-games were the chief pastimes indulged in by the people who crowded thither, and the fights inseparable from such pastimes were not wanting. Thus the word kurubeu’en acquired and still retains in the Achehnese vernacular the meaning of a heathenish tumult.”
See Also
- Kanduri (general)
- Kanduri Apam
- Kanduri Bu
- Puasa (Ramadhan fasting month)
- Bitay
- Tuan di Bitay
- Peusijuk (cooling)
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.